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SLAVIC 15N:"My Life Had Stood - A Loaded Gun": Dostoevsky, Dickinson, and the Question of Freedom.

As far apart as Dickinson and Dostoevsky are in terms of national contexts, gendered possibilities of life, and their choice of minimalist or maximalist forms, their experiences of constriction and freedom bore significant similarities. Dostoevsky penned his vow to love life on the day that he was manacled as a political prisoner and marched off to thirteen years of forced labor and exile in Siberia. He exploded back on the Petersburg literary scene in the early 1860's with three block-busters,
Notes from the Underground,
Memoirs from the House of the Dead, and
Crime and Punishment, establishing himself forever as Russia's most controversial explorer of the violence of human thought. In these same years Emily Dickinson was sequestering herself in her family's Amherst house for the remainder of her life, yet she announced her rebel's credo in these enigmatic lines:
"My Life Had Stood, a Loaded Gun - until the Day..." In this class we will explore the idea that Emily Dickinson and Fy
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As far apart as Dickinson and Dostoevsky are in terms of national contexts, gendered possibilities of life, and their choice of minimalist or maximalist forms, their experiences of constriction and freedom bore significant similarities. Dostoevsky penned his vow to love life on the day that he was manacled as a political prisoner and marched off to thirteen years of forced labor and exile in Siberia. He exploded back on the Petersburg literary scene in the early 1860's with three block-busters,
Notes from the Underground,
Memoirs from the House of the Dead, and
Crime and Punishment, establishing himself forever as Russia's most controversial explorer of the violence of human thought. In these same years Emily Dickinson was sequestering herself in her family's Amherst house for the remainder of her life, yet she announced her rebel's credo in these enigmatic lines:
"My Life Had Stood, a Loaded Gun - until the Day..." In this class we will explore the idea that Emily Dickinson and Fyodor Dostoevsky may be seen as original shifters of modern literary art and philosophy. We will unpack the agonizing relationship of freedom, action, and language that both authors explore. Classes will be organized around presentations, debates in pairs, the exploration of "scandalous scenes," and finally a symposium in which students will present and contribute to each other's paper projects. There are no prerequisites for this course apart from a desire to read poems and novels closely and in tandem.

A man who likes to ride horses shirtless. An autocrat who has shaped contemporary Russia and won't let go of the reins. A conniver who interferes in international democratic processes toward his own nefarious ends.nMore than a politician or an individual, "Putin" has become a catch-all that stands in for Russia as a whole. In this course, we'll attempt to separate the man from the myth and to understand the historical and cultural context behind Putin's policies. In the process, we will strive better to grasp contemporary Russian society as a complex and culturally rich environment, not just an oppressed land under the thumb of one man.nIn the course of our analysis, we will examine literary and cultural artifacts and expressive works that engage with political, social, and universal human problems in a Russian and post-Soviet context, interpreting and critiquing those cultural objects with an eye to aesthetic methods and qualities and also how they reflect historical and cultural elem
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A man who likes to ride horses shirtless. An autocrat who has shaped contemporary Russia and won't let go of the reins. A conniver who interferes in international democratic processes toward his own nefarious ends.nMore than a politician or an individual, "Putin" has become a catch-all that stands in for Russia as a whole. In this course, we'll attempt to separate the man from the myth and to understand the historical and cultural context behind Putin's policies. In the process, we will strive better to grasp contemporary Russian society as a complex and culturally rich environment, not just an oppressed land under the thumb of one man.nIn the course of our analysis, we will examine literary and cultural artifacts and expressive works that engage with political, social, and universal human problems in a Russian and post-Soviet context, interpreting and critiquing those cultural objects with an eye to aesthetic methods and qualities and also how they reflect historical and cultural elements of Russia over a 25-year period. Cultural products to be addressed include literature and film (and one graphic novel) from the Perestroika period through the present day. We will also read President Putin's autobiography, First Person, and several of his speeches, using techniques of literary analysis to parse the particular story about Russia that he aims to convey to Russians. By examining and exploring a range of cultural objects from Russia's recent history, we seek to understand the forces that contributed to social and political change over those years, the effect those changes had on ordinary (and extraordinary) Russians, and how those effects take on meaningful aesthetic form through creative expression.

In this seminar, we will study the development of the 19th-century Russian novel through the close reading and broad cultural examination of three masterpieces: Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov (1859), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877). Through the analysis of the novels and their context, we will define the aesthetic contours of the Russian realist novel. We will pay special attention to the questions of genre, narration, discourse, medium, and intermediality. Note: To be eligible for WAYS/WIM credit, you must take
SLAVIC 146 for a minimum of 3 Units and a Letter Grade.

How does memory work in Soviet and post-Soviet space? How do cities create and transform memory? This course uncovers the layers of cultural history in four Russian and Ukrainian cities: Kyiv, Odesa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. All four cities were imagined as utopian projects and all underwent transformation and destruction in the 20th century; their earlier layers exist only in literary texts and films. Readings combine literary and critical theory (Benjamin, Foucault, Barthes, Lotman) with fiction and films (Akhmatova, Andrukhovych, Babel, Bitov, Bulgakov, Bunin, Paradzhanov, Sokurov, Trifonov, Zhabotinsky, Vertov, Zeldovich) that display the ongoing collective memory work on the Soviet legacy. Students will create cartographic projects with Google Maps, Earth and Tour Builder, and HyperCities that visualize the urban palimpsest of cities undergoing major transformations.

SLAVIC 169:Folklore Theory and Slavic Folklore (SLAVIC 369)

Why do educated elites care about popular or folk culture, and how do they use it? An intellectual history of two centuries of folklore theory, with examples drawn from Eastern European (Slavic and Jewish) lore; students collect other folklore themselves and analyze it. Separate section for Russian readers.

In this seminar, we will study the development of the 19th-century Russian novel through the close reading and broad cultural examination of three masterpieces: Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov (1859), Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), and Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877). Through the analysis of the novels and their context, we will define the aesthetic contours of the Russian realist novel. We will pay special attention to the questions of genre, narration, discourse, medium, and intermediality. Note: To be eligible for WAYS/WIM credit, you must take
SLAVIC 146 for a minimum of 3 Units and a Letter Grade.